Seriously...If I made one, would it be needed? I used to enjoy tanking and I hear people say we need more prot Pallies or at least be nice to have more. Cause I'm still thinking of making another toon to really seriously level. Before my schedule changes, another few weeks in Kara on my Shaman (hoping for certain drops) and I really won't "need" to go anymore. I know I said I thought about a warlock, but my original passion for the game was tanking. Anyways... What ya think?

Shhh! Theres a dead horde in my trunk. Wanna see it? Fuck around and you'll be it.

Well, like I said, I've seen people talk about it several times. I used to have a tank, cept it was a warrior and he was pre-TBC. We have plenty of warriors though... I've been wanting a serious alt... So I decided to try a Pally and turn him into a Tankadin. We will see what happens.

Shhh! Theres a dead horde in my trunk. Wanna see it? Fuck around and you'll be it.

A pally will never be as awesome as a Warrior as a true main tank. However, where a pally real shines is an off tank roll, picking up adds and such on boss fights. (I.e Illhoof, nightbane, 2 hydross adds, some of Solarians little spawns, infernals on mag =P)

Long as a pally doesn't plan on QQ'ing about not being the first to main tank such and such mob then its all good. Its do able for a pally to main tank most bosses, they just need a higher gear requirement than warriors. I for one wish we had 1 or 2 full time prot pallies. Pocket Pallys ftw.

Thats all my opinion though, others may disagree.

Last edited by Brulan on Tue Feb 19, 2008 9:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

I agree to some extent Pale. I wouldn't want to MT bosses in raids were a warrior would be better at it. I mean, face it, warriors are the best single target tanks/boss tanks in the game. Thats not what I'm going for. Though Pallies are teh l33t at 5-mans, he would just be an OT. Something like what Brendore does in Kara now sort of thing. I'm sure I'd keep Polar my main and advanced further. But also like Brendore said, even though he likes his Tankadin, maybe give him a chance to more on Lealla. It would be nice just to have another imo. We will see what happens... I may get him to level 30 and just go, meh whatever and never play him again and delete him like all my other alts. heh...

Shhh! Theres a dead horde in my trunk. Wanna see it? Fuck around and you'll be it.

As said, Paladins can main tank just about anything in the game, except for gimmick fights specifically designed to nuke them. There's no fundamental reason why they can't get just as much health and mitigation/avoidance as a Warrior tank, although this will come at the expense of some threat generation. In fact, a dedicated Paladin MT will keep at least two gear sets: one for pure stamina/mitigation, and the other for threat - much like a Warrior.

However, they lack the ultimate survival abilities of a Warrior: namely Last Stand and Shield Wall, and so are riskier to use in progression tanking situations. We all know how well they tank groups of mobs, making them naturally suited for OT roles. Plus, they have superior threat generation against Demons and Undead.

At this point, I would have no qualms about MT'ing Kara on Brendore - hell, he could technically MT any of the encounters we've beaten so far, with the exception of those Overcharging bastards in TK (no Spell Reflection). I just need to figure out how to get him in on an HKM kill (or even VR) so he can get his shoulders.

The last stand/shield wall is why I was saying a pally would never be = or better to a warrior. They are pretty damn close on most bosses, but Warrior is still king of the single mob boss fight.

With that being said, I think blizz is going away from the old style raid bosses where you HAD to use a warrior. Maexxna for example if you didnt have a geared out warrior you wouldn't be able to kill the stupid spider. Then again I think Brutalicus or whatever his retarded name in Sunwell Plateau is going back to the old patchwerk style fight.

As far as getting Brendore his shoulders.....

We can always just use 2 hunters on the shaman in HKM. Thats how everyone did it when it first came out (Second Impact style baby) I can keep them up easy I was the one that usually healed them. Just have them put up there NR aura and they'll be fine with my leet chain heals and LHW.

Its not like we dont have the dmg on that fight to sacrifice 1 extra hunter to tank the shaman.

I think the problem now is whether we actually schedule Gruul anymore. Progression raids ftw imo. I mean if we arn't scheduling gruul anymore I dont see a reason why we can't just set one up and see if the guild is interested on an off night. But I would recommend running that by Elven.

Kind of off topic, but I'd like to finally get into a Gruuls. My timing on everything just sucks lately. It'd be nice to get some of the lewt, but even if I didn't, I just wanna have the pleasure of killing him one time. Anyways...

Shhh! Theres a dead horde in my trunk. Wanna see it? Fuck around and you'll be it.

I have a question for you, Lealla. This is just me thinking out loud, but I wanted to get your opinion on something. I've been looking at Pally tanking guides and looking at rotations and all, but I was thinking about something... I'm looking at the skills mostly used in the rotations and all and what do you usually judge right off the bat? I can't seem to find that, though I assume righteousness for quick added threat... But what about crusader at first? I mean, it increases holy damage dealt to the target. So I guess my question is ultimately, does the initial judgement of righteousness outweigh the benefit of using crusader first then judging righteousness from there on out?... Whats your usual rotation? I mean, It's obvious to me what it would be, but just curious since you are like an ultimate theorycrafter and expert and all...heh... So I highly value your input.

Edit:... Oh yeah, do you judge every time the judgement cooldown is up or when the seal is about to expire? Once again I would assume every time judgement would be up, but then again, I don't really want to assume and be srewcing up. Know what I mean?

Shhh! Theres a dead horde in my trunk. Wanna see it? Fuck around and you'll be it.

It's a good question, Polarside. I have experimented with various strategies and debated the value of different Judgement cycles, and here's what I've come up with. Of course, this is always subject to change depending on the situation. Warning: long post coming.

First, it may surprise you that I almost always judge Wisdom while tanking rather than Crusader. Why, you ask? Well, unless I'm the MT, I'm not taking enough damage for incoming heals to replenish my mana faster than I spend it. So, either I have to sacrifice some threat for mana regen, risk going OOM, or go through 20+ mana pots per run. On 5-man normal runs, I have a serious problem these days in that I cannot regenerate enough mana to sustain threat. Heroics are actually easier in this regard.

The other concern here is that, since we don't run with a Retribution Paladin, there's nobody to maintain other Judgements on our targets, and Wisdom has a huge benefit for the raid. To see this, just look at the WWS for fights that I've brought Brendore to. I've seen my one JoW restore as much raid mana as two Shadow Priests. For that reason alone, it's worth it to keep up instead of Crusader, especially when I'm the only one benefiting from the latter. If we were to run with a Retadin, I'd let him use Crusader while I judge Wisdom, for a double benefit. Another Paladin could drop Light on the target, and we'd have a huge source of raid mana and healing with near 100% uptime.

I will only use Crusader if I am main tanking and the fight is sufficiently threat-sensitive. Void Reaver and Gruul come to mind. But again, the problem with these fights is that when I'm not the MT, I can't get enough heals to sustain maximum threat generation. If I were MT'ing Prince Malchezzar, for example, I'd use Crusader.

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Which brings us to your second question: initial threat. In almost every case, my starting rotation looks like this:

The cycle then continues with Holy Shield, Judgement/Seal of Vengeance, and Consecration as each cools down, respectively. I also prioritize them roughly in that order. I don't mind missing a tick or two of Consecration, but if I miss Holy Shield, I could get crushed and that's bad.

Generally, I find that Avenger's Shield gives me sufficient frontload threat to avoid needing Judgement of Righteousness first. I prefer to build threat over time with SoV rather than use the static generation of SoR. Plus, Judgement of Vengeance with a 5-stack of Holy Vengeance hits a lot harder than Judgement of Righteousness. However, the great weakness of Seal of Vengeance is that if I haven't got a debuff on the target, the Judgement is worthless. Therefore, I intend to set up a macro that will let me use a modifier key to cast Righteousness vs. Vengeance so I don't have to remember to swap them on my bars for different fights. It would look something like this:

If I did absolutely have to maximize initial threat, or pick up threat quickly on an aggro wipe, I'd use Avenger's Shield, Judgement of Righteousness, then Crusader or Wisdom after the cooldown, then back to Vengeance. (Note to raid leaders: a Paladin tank is really, really useful on Hydross transitions because of Consecration and the Holy Vengeance DoT. Hint, hint.)

One FYI: don't cast Avenger's Shield while you're being meleed. Not only do you lose a lot of cast time from pushback, but you can't dodge, parry, or block while casting. Hammer of Wrath is semi-ok, as it's a really short cast time, but could still get you killed horribly on fights like Prince Malchezzar or Moroes.

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To answer your last question, unless mana is an issue, I always judge as soon as the cooldown is up.

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FYI, I've done some WWS analysis, and the single largest source of damage (and consequently, threat) for me on most raids is... Consecration. Yeah, it helps that much. So, for a Paladin tank, the ideal pulling situation allows any CC to take place away from where mobs are being tanked so I can lay down Consecration without fear of breaking them. This is one reason why Avenger's Shield is so awesome - it applies a slow debuff to give CC time to do their job.

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Here's a single-target threat analysis by ability. These figures are based on rough observations, as I don't have the exact numbers handy.

Note that you can only have Righteousness *or* Vengeance up at the same time, with the exception that it is possible (albeit risky) to alternate SoR and SoV to maximize threat generation with a full stack of Holy Vengeance.

The above values give a best-case of roughly 1000 TPS and a worst-case of roughly 680 using all abilities in perfect rotation, which seems to correspond fairly well with my observations. Note that Consecration is the single largest contributor to threat generation out of all of a Protection Paladin's abilities.